Minecraft: 01 Initial Thoughts

I feel a little like I'm looking and leaping at the same time. Minecraft has been popping up in my reading, my young nephew  is an active player, YouTube videos of Minecraft scenes appear in my searches, and I've seen the reddit images of blocky halloween costumes.. Two days ago I purchased a copy and my eight-year-old […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | 3 Comments Posted in Gamification

Minecraft: 02 Organized Chaos

What a wild day. First I want to share how awesome this chaotic day was - student engagement from beginning to end by every single student. Every one of them! It started like this: We need to make this space work for our classroom network. We need to get the classroom network working. We need […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | 3 Comments Posted in Gamification

Walking the Line in the Middle Years

Young adults? Older children? Something in between? Tween is a neat description for these amazing people in education's middle years. Walking the line between adulthood and childhood, they venture forward into mature responsibilities and retreat back to a child's freedoms. Or is it really a back-and-forth suggesting a nether place between two states of being? […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | No Comments Posted in Pedagogy

FORE! Desk-Sized Mini Golf HoleProject. Front 9 in room 3, back 9 in room 2

Here is a project I put together with my former teaching partner, Linda Benson. We were looking for a quick but engaging hands-on project that integrated many subject areas. It ties together Math (scale, proportion, surface area, integers), Science (light: law of reflection) HERE is the document we circulated to the class after creating the […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | No Comments Posted in Projects

Team Teaching Works for Me

This post is the content from a conference session I presented in the early 2000s with my former teaching partner, Linda Benson. We worked as a teaching team for 6 years and Linda team taught for many years with other partners prior to our time together. Without a doubt, the time we spent working together […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | 1 Comment Posted in Pedagogy

Project Based Learning: Early Humans

Having tired of the evolution charts and polysyllabic mouthfuls of species, I suggested to my grade 8 students that we try something different. I proposed we do a SimSurvival project within which we would learn about human evolution and the rise of civilizations in an open simulation. The scenario is simple: for whatever reason, some […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | 6 Comments Posted in Pedagogy, Projects

How Grades Change Conversations About Assessment & Achievement

I began teaching in 1991 believing myself to be a very progressive grades-based teacher with exquisitely designed marking keys designed to quantitatively assess realms such as punctuation, spelling, organization, use of voice, and (drum roll, please) creativity. It was rather easy to bestow, scientifically, precise to tenths of a percent (any more, though feasible, would […]

Posted by milesmac on December 14th, 2011 | 2 Comments Posted in Pedagogy
%d bloggers like this: